Minutes later, the bluegill lay gasping in my hand while I unhooked the small bug and released the 'gill back to the pond waters.

Of course, most bluegill aren't big. And no, they aren't trout. Nor was I on a traditional trout stream and no, I wasn't using flies that were exact imitation nymphs or delicate-hackled dries. But the bluegills were strong and sassy, and take an assortment of bugs and flies almost any time of the year. They are easily found in almost any warm water including farm ponds and are readily caught with any trout or bass fly tackle you already have. Assuming fly fishing experience and a basic outfit, a small box of sunfish bugs is the only additional investment that any angler needs to get in on the fun of sunfish on the fly.

Unfortunately, among fly rodders, sunfish are sort of like Rodney Dangerfield. They just don't get any respect. Despite the fact that they are plentiful, popular with kids, found in every state in the union and and on waters close to almost everyone, they are often ignored in favor of harder to reach and harder to catch species such as trout, salmon, steelhead, bass, pike and a host of salt water species.

And that's a shame, since sunfish offer great thrills. They are ideal as a "practice" species while perfecting bug and fly patterns for bass or as a practice casting target when training for tough trout. But they are at their best when they are simply enjoyed as I did - worthwhile species on their own for fly rodders to catch for a few hours or a whole day.

Sunfish is a collective term for a host of species that include bluegills, redear sunfish, pumpkinseed, redbreast sunfish, rock bass, green sunfish, longear sunfish, orangespotted sunfish and others. Some, like the pumpkinseed are small, while bluegills can grow to large size, such as the 4 pound 3 ounce IGFA record, and similar records of 2 pound 2 ounce green sunfish or 5 pound 3 ounce redear sunfish caught in California. These catches weren't made on fly tackle, but there is nothing to prevent large catches or even catches to eclipse these and other records.

In fact, fly rods are often the easiest and best way to catch both quantity and quality sunfish. The habits and habitat of the fish are such that they are often found close to shore, making them ideal for boat fishing, shore fishing and wading. They are often found in shallows making them easy to fish for with floating lines or sink tip lines. They uniformly have small mouths that often make it difficult to take traditional spinning or casting lures, but which can easily inhale a popper or slider twitched on the top, a woolly bugger or large wet fly drifted in the depths, or even nymph or terrestrial floated in the surface film. They are part of the same family as largemouth and smallmouth bass, and thus found in similar areas and water conditions.

While finding fish is a basic to catching anything, sunfish are often easily found no further than your nearest waterway. Many states have stocking programs in which both bass and sunfish are stocked in private ponds - often farm ponds - along with public waterways and community ponds. The only stipulation to the private pond stocking is that the public be allowed to fish. This means that in my state alone there are thousands of ponds that are available for the asking for sunfish fly rodding.

Fortunately, provided that you are courteous and careful about closing farm gates and following simple requests from farmers, most farmers will welcome you on their property. Some may even request a few sunfish for a meal, usually an easy request to fulfill. Similar situations for farm ponds are available in most states and statistics indicate that there is sunfish water within about five miles of 75 percent of the US population.

The perfect fish for beginning flyfishermen.

The result is that sunfish are ideal not only for the experienced angler looking for a change of pace; but for beginners looking for a fish on which to practice; kids wanting the best chance for fishing success when trying the light wand for the first time; and for any angler wishing to perfect casting skills, popping bug manipulation or fish-strike timing on live targets. Sunfish and popping bugs are thus a great common denominator for any fly rodder anywhere. And while they can hold their own, they are also a great "practice" fish and substitute for trout, smallmouth, salmon or largemouth.

And sunfish are found everywhere, not just in farm and private ponds. Many state impoundments and lakes are stocked with the standard warm water combination of bass and sunfish, while sunfish are found in streams and rivers, particularly the slower meandering waterways that harbor warm water species such as largemouth and smallmouth.

They are warm water species so that they will not be in fast and cold trout and salmon streams, but can be and are found in ponds, sloughs, lakes, reservoirs, slow moving rivers, creeks and the lower ends of streams and tributaries. Their seasonal patterns are not unlike those for bass, with sunfish hibernating in the depths during the winter, then moving in the shallows in the spring to spawn. Their spawning beds are not unlike those made by bass, and often within spitting distance of shore - easily visible and easy casting targets. In summer they move back to the cooler depths, but these depths are often no more than five to ten feet deep, easily targets for a fly rod offering. In the fall the move around again, particularly with the mix of summer-stratified water.

As such, sunfish are ideal targets anytime of the year, particularly with some special but easy techniques. One of these techniques is to fish spawning beds in the spring, casting a sink tip line and short leader, tipped with a bright wet fly, and fished right over the bed.

And while they will take an assortment of underwater flies that include zonkers, wooly worms, wooly buggers, wet flies, streamers and the like, the real fun comes when they hit surface bugs.

Sunfish are prime fly rod targets during early spawning periods as the sun warms the dish pan size shallow beds. By summer they move off into slightly deeper water, but still stay close to shore and in schools where they can be picked off at will - and in quantity - provided that you fish early or late in the day. Mid-day can be tough on the top for sunfish. By fall they are moving back and forth between the shallows and deeper water, and still readily taking surface bugs in the shallow, and often throughout the day.

Go deep with a sink tip line.

Fortunately, tackle for fly rod sunfish can be as simple as a beginners outfit. All you need will be almost anything that you would normally use for trout or bass, with an average outfit including a 6 to 7 weight rod, weight forward line to match and simple fly reel. Add a 7 to 9 foot leader to the end of the floating line and you are in business. For fishing deep when required, add a sink tip line and use a short three foot long leader. If lacking a sink tip line, stick with the longer leader and add a little weight (wrap on lead or split shot) close to the fly to get it down. Leaders don't have to have fine tippets and anything with a tippet from four to eight pound test is usually OK. If you have a larger outfit for bass - say an 8 weight rod and line, that's OK also, although you will have more fun with the fish from the lighter rigs.

Both single and multiplying reels are fine. You probably won't need backing for these small fish, but add some anyway so that with the fly line in place, the reel is full for easier and quicker line retrieve with each turn of the handle. For faster retrieving, ideal in some boat fishing and wading situations, try a multiplying reel. Some were one time made by Daiwa and Martin still makes a few. A multiplier (in which one turn of the handle makes for more than one turn of the spool) is ideal when casting different distances (as when wading), since it will retrieve line faster and easier than a single action.

Best rods will be eight feet to nine feet long for for shallow fishing from shore or shallow wading, a longer 9 to 9-1/2 foot rod if fishing lower in the water when wading deep or throwing line from the low profile of a belly boat.

Sunfish accessories can be simple. For early and late when the water chills, consider hippers or waders, but for summer fishing wading wet is ideal. While I like a vest when wearing boots, I prefer a chest pack that rides higher when wet wading or using a belly boat. A shorty vest is another possibility, although with most belly boats you will have enough side pockets to hold any flies, bugs and accessory gear.

If fishing fast waters, water with an uneven bottom or unfamiliar water, wear a vest style PFD that has pockets for carrying gear. The advantage of these vests is that they fit comfortably for casting even with the necessary flotation and though lacking the number and diversity of pockets of standard fly fishing vests, usually have four pockets that will hold all the gear required for this simple fly fishing. For ponds or slow rivers, consider also belly boats that allow you to get out into deeper waters without straining a cast or launching a boat.

If there is a secret to stocking
the sunfish bug box, it is to go small.

Include a box or two of bugs and flies, clippers for changing them, perhaps a spool or tippet material and you are ready to go. If there is a secret to stocking the sunfish bug box, it is to go small. Sunfish have small mouths for their bodies and a standard bass bug, while able to take sunfish sometimes, will cause more misses than solid hookups. Best sizes are bugs that range from perhaps a tops of #4 through a #12, with #8 through #12 best for most situations. While bugs do go down to size #14, and smaller sizes can be made, the larger the bug within the limits of the fish to take it, the better the hooking and easier the unhooking after the sunfish is landed.

Unlike some of the more exotic bugs for bass, salt water species and the similar floating terrestrials for trout, sunfish bugs are simple. They are mostly of cork or molded floating plastic, in basic popper, slider and sponge insect (closed cell foam) designs. Poppers have a flat or cupped face to pop and gurgle while sliders are "poppers in reverse" in which the tapered pointed or rounded end will cause the bug to swim and "wake" but not pop or gurgle. Sponge surface bugs just lay flat but their typical rubber legs move around when the bug is twitched to attract hits.

Most bugs have simple feather or fur tails with wrapped hackle skirts and are often made with rubber legs for added attraction. Often the rubber legs are very long, as notes Tom Eggler of the Gaines Company, a major manufacturer of bugs. These, he explains in his literature, are so that they can be left long for those that like them that way, clipped shorter if desired (most anglers do this), or clipped very short for a short, insect leg look. They can also be pulled out or clipped off to remove them completely. You can also make your own foam bugs simply by tying a tail onto a hook, forcing the hook through a foam body (make a hole with an awl first) and gluing in place with a CA (cyanoacrylate) glue. This is easy using Live Body (available from tackle shops or Dale Clemens) or EdgeWater foams. Some super foam bugs in preformed shapes are now available from Mr. Bob's, previously only a manufacturer of finished bugs. Painted cork bug bodies rom Gaines are available through tackle shops. Bugs of deer hair are also available, with Hank Roberts a major supplier of the smaller sizes used for sunfish. Most of the bugs - molded foam, cork and body hair - are multi-color in design, with banded and striped bodies, although solid color bugs are also available.

Flies for fishing deep can also be simple, bright and in the same size range as bugs. Simple flies an include hellgrammite patterns, woolly buggers, simple streamers, crayfish patterns (particularly for rockbass that grub around on the bottom), wet flies, zonkers, Clousers, even simple nymphs. Stick to dark natural colors for the Clousers, hellgrammites and nymphs, bright colorful patterns for the Zonkers, streamers, and wet flies. Woolly buggers are good both in muted black and olive shades as well as bright chartreuse, yellow and orange.

After all, sunfish after bugs or flies act like
a pack of cub scouts grabbing hot dogs
after a hot day on the trail.

Since sunfish are not sophisticated, the fishing doesn't require the subtleties of trout fishing. After all, sunfish after bugs or flies act like a pack of cub scouts grabbing hot dogs after a hot day on the trail. And since they school, there is competition among all these sunfish to get to the fly first. The one problem with this is in keeping the little ones off of the fly or bug to give time for the more deliberate larger sunfish to hit.

The basics to taking sunfish are to first find the right sunfish water, as outlined above, and then to find the right spot in the water. Often that spot is in a quiet cove, around weed beds or lily pads, near a small breakline that drops off into deeper water, under a log jam, along a dock, around pilings in shallow water, etc.

As with the method of taking trout by chumming them up with live insects before throwing a well crafted fly into their feeding lane, sunfish can be chummed and worked into a feeding frenzy with a surface scattering of bread crumbs, broken crackers or other fare. Just make sure that the crumbs are very small so that you entice rather than feed. If the fish are near the surface and used to being fed, you can even fool them and still work up their appetite by throwing fine gravel or sand into their area where the scattered surface disturbance will fool them into thinking food is available - and have them waiting for a well thrown bug.

It is usually best to work around the edges of the school first so as to not scare the school by lining them - although most sunfish are difficult to scare away. Working a little short of the main school or along one edge is best first, later working a bug through the main school or swimming a fly deep. Unlike bass where a healthy popping is often required to entice a hit, bluegills and other sunfish often hit best with a subtle technique of casting a bug, letting it settle on the surface and then working it quietly so that it does not so much pop or swim as twitch and bob around, causing a ring of ripples out from the bug as it sits and dances on the surface.

In current, often the best technique is to find likely spots and then cast across and upstream so that the bug or fly will float downstream, all the while being twitched, lightly popped or swum short distances. The secret is to keep the bug in the feeding lane, while making it move enough to resemble a downed insect or injured minnow or frog.

Upstream casts are also good, but require enough line control to maintain a tight line should a fish hit as the bug and line float directly towards you. Downstream casts are also good in certain running water situations. I find these casts best when made quartering downstream, popping or swimming the bug regularly as it curves through current, and best in front of a rock, boulder or in front of a ledge or lip of a riffle where bluegill, other sunfish and rock bass often hang out. Flies can be fished the same way, maintaining a tight line and high rod to minimize drag and to control the fly and feel hits.

Other practice casts and presentations are best tried first on sunfish, since these small but active species will hit readily when interested in a bug to give an instant feed back as to presentation, bug manipulation and bug design. If there is a downside to sunfish, it is only that they don't get more respect or are more "politically correct" in today's piscatorial world. They offer a lot, are willing to show it any time and can provide fly rod fun when trout and smallmouth aren't in season, won't take, or become somehow too serious a sport. First and foremost, sunfish should be fished with a fly rod for no other reason than the fun that they provide.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

More information on fly rod fishing for sunfish and on sunfish popping bugs is available as follows:

Eggler, Tom. Fishing Popping Bugs for Bass & Panfish, Gaines, PA The Gaines Co., 1987, 28 pages. Available for $2.00 from The Gaines Company, Box 35, Gaines, PA 16921. Includes the 28 page booklet, plus a mini-catalog plus shipping and handling.

Ellis, Jack, The Sunfishes, Bennington, VT, Abenaki Publishers, 139 pages.

Keith, Tom. Fly Tying and Fishing for Panfish & Bass, Portland, OR: Frank Amato Publications, 1989, 192 pages.

Pfeiffer, C. Boyd. Bug Making, New York, NY Lyons & Burford, Inc., 1993, 271 pages. Stewart, Dick and Allen, Farrow. Flies for Bass & Panfish, Intervale, NH Northland Press, Inc., 1992, 180 pages.

Photos by C. Boyd Pfeiffer

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